Cultural Identity: Between Reality and Fiction

Casas Pérez / Between Reality Television and Fiction & New Media / November 2005 10.1177/1527476405279956 Cultural Identity: Between Reality and Fic...
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Casas Pérez / Between Reality Television and Fiction & New Media / November 2005

10.1177/1527476405279956

Cultural Identity: Between Reality and Fiction A Transformation of Genre and Roles in Mexican Telenovelas María de la Luz Casas Pérez Tecnológico de Monterrey Campus Cuernavaca

This article reviews the concept of cultural identity vis-à-vis the viewing of soap operas, or telenovelas, within the Mexican context. The patterns of viewing, role modeling, narrative, and other characteristics are reviewed to define the ways in which this audiovisual genre contributes to the building of cultural elements within Mexican society.

Keywords:

telenovelas; genre; roles; cultural identity and Mexico

In examining the way people use media, we surmise that media help in shaping the world we live in. They give us ideas, offer interpretation or preferred meanings, and help us make sense of reality. This is especially true of soap operas or telenovelas: they help viewers relate to social situations. As some researchers have stated, audiences are active and derive a variety of meanings from telenovelas (McAnany and LaPastina 1994). Hereby, we state that telenovelas also help construct cultural identity. Examples will be given to demonstrate ways in which individuals focus, give meaning, and relate to other members of their group or class, developing a sense of cultural differentiation. These parameters are fundamental to understanding changing roles and social patterns on which, as discussed later, telenovelas are believed to have certain influence (Kottak 1990). In defining cultural identity, several notions arise, namely, those of cultural expression, nationality, and national sentiment. These vary according to the position and particular philosophy of culture. Culture, and cultural

TELEVISION & NEW MEDIA Vol. 6 No. 4, November 2005 407–414 DOI: 10.1177/1527476405279956 © 2005 Sage Publications

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expression, will hereby be referred to as the basic ingredient of the notion of cultural identity. As Paul Audley noted, “our culture is expressed not just in works of art or entertainment, but in all forms of expression that reflect attitudes, opinions, values and ideas, and in information and analysis concerning the present as well as the past. Just as an awareness of our collective past is an essential component of cultural identity, so too is an awareness of what is happening now” (1983, xxi). Culture is a complex and dynamic ecology of people, things, worldviews, activities, and settings, an ecology that fundamentally endures but also changes in routine communication and social interaction: “today familiar resources ranging from food, language and religious rituals to TV programmes and popular music are combined by individuals and groups into distinctive cultural repertoires or tool kits” (Lull 1995, 66). Television has become an important part of daily routine. In some instances, and particularly for some people, life takes place according to television programming (Lull 1998b).

Telenovelas and Life Dynamics Statistics related to telenovela viewing in Latin America indicate that viewers are mainly women, although male audiences are increasing. Research shows that audiences vary from Brazil to Venezuela, Colombia, Chile, Peru, and Mexico and that the purposes of telenovela production are also varied. In Brazil, telenovelas helped the government spread a changing image of the nation from rural-regional to urban-national (Kottak 1990); they also helped women deal with birth-control issues (Population Communications International 1997)1; in Venezuela, telenovelas are a way of expressing female domination within the family (Barrios, as quoted in McAnany and LaPastina 19994). In most of Latin America, telenovelas are the preferred show for women, used as a way of communicating and as linkage among women of different generations (Covarrubias Cuellar, Bautista, and Uribe 1994). Patterns of behavior are present in the way audiences deal with television. Rituals—regular, constant family activities—are repeated to negotiate encounters with television. Men are attracted to action movies; women prefer slow programs in which they can pay attention to details (Muñoz 1992). Telenovelas are changing, as are the people who watch them and the way they deal with whatever beliefs and values telenovelas reproduce. We may therefore assume that individual, cultural, and national identities are being transformed by new patterns of consumption and production of media content. In Mexico, telenovelas are a guaranteed media product. Ninety percent of homes have at least one television set, and more than 80 percent of

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viewers indicate they watch television daily (Huerta Wong 2001). Changes have occurred in themes, plots, and in the way characters deal with everyday problems in telenovelas. Studies report men watching soaps more frequently than before. Recent evidence in Mexico seems to contradict the masculine hegemony of the television room (González 1994; Lozano and Martínez 2000; Huerta Wong 2001), suggesting there is no clear evidence of male dominance in the decision-making process.

Mexican Cultural Identities and Their Por trayal in Media Several observations can be made about cultural representations of lo mexicano throughout the years. Those representations can be related to the emergence of particular media as well. For instance, the representation of male dominance in music and film in the forties exported a view of machos dressed in mariachi clothes, happily singing while facing danger. Females would be represented as companions of, or background to, the main characters, serving much the same purpose as nice scenery or a fine horse. For years, Mexican telenovelas consisted mainly of a love triangle in which a young, beautiful, honest, and poor girl falls in love with a man, usually rich and usually of a higher social class, and has to overcome all sorts of trouble caused by an evil third party.2 Some sacrifice would usually be required. Lovers would have to endure pain and sorrow to achieve true love, which would be the dominant force for cultural cohesion, with marriage as the ultimate social mechanism for its legitimization. No sordid or deviant behaviors would be presented, other than those of evil characters. Love and marriage would be considered the basic components of social integration and stability. During the eighties and nineties, Mexico gained presence through telenovelas around the world but also began to receive cultural influences through media imports. Venezuelan and Brazilian telenovelas invaded Mexican TV screens, giving viewers new choices, themes, and representations of love and relationships. With the North American influence for more explicit sex on the screen, a decline in commitment among couples, less focus on marriage as the only socially accepted institution for the legitimization of relationships, and more acceptance of premarital sex, Latin Americans looked for alternatives. A chaotic world was not explainable through the stability of family as institution; political and economic turmoil was not resolved through hard work; values were in crisis. Telenovelas started to include all these elements, offering sex appeal and visual cadence. “As society changes, as fashions vary, as personal liberty fluctuates, as freedom of expression increases, as democracy develops, as alternatives are born, as justice is sought—then inevitably what we see on television is

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bound to change too, to keep up with modern life and trends” (Pearson 1999). Therefore, as the Mexican social context evolved, female telenovela characters began to work outside the home and male macho patterns started to fade. Women began to address issues related to domestic violence, male domination, and other issues usually avoided within the genre.

A Small Token of Change in Mexican Telenovelas Along with the factors described above, much of the impetus for change came from shifts in the Mexican media conglomerates. In 1993, the Mexican government sold part of its media enterprises in a package that included newspapers, television frequencies, film theatres, and film production companies. Among these was TV Azteca’s channel 13, a television station with national broadcasting range. Its license was granted to Ricardo Salinas Pliego, president of Televisión Azteca, today Televisa’s main competitor. Salinas Pliego quickly understood that to compete, he must produce telenovelas, the highest rating programs on Mexican television, with new ways to address the genre. He hired Epigmenio Ibarra, head of Argos Productions, to produce a series of telenovelas that soon provoked comments from academia and critics alike. Ibarra was trained in film narrative3: he took the plot outside the studio, onto the streets. He made extreme changes in camera movements, dialogues, and themes. Characters were less fairy-tale-like and more like real, flawed people. He brought previously ignored subjects such as revenge, battered women, and betrayal onto the scene. He even portrayed government bureaucrats and police officers as telenovela characters, addressing issues of political corruption that were not censored by the government as evidence of openness and proof of the newly acquired freedom of expression in media.4 Televisa kept its channel 2 (also with national broadcasting range) primarily for the broadcasting of telenovelas, but it worked to diversify its audiences. The genre evolved and became multitargeted: Televisa’s early afternoon telenovelas would be directed at children and young adults, late afternoon ones at housewives, and late evening telenovelas would be directed at adults, both male and female. The genre is still evolving, affecting the way Mexicans view themselves. The process described above can be illustrated by viewer responses to two successful telenovelas in Mexico: one from Televisa and one from Azteca, emerging from data compiled in 2001 at the Tecnológico de Monterrey in Campus Cuernavaca, Mexico.5 Episodes of Televisa’s Sin Pecado Concebido (Conceived Without Sin) were examined alongside episodes of Azteca’s Lo Que es el Amor (What Love Is). The treatment of new

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themes and subject matters was examined by content analyses of episodes of both telenovelas,6 whereas issues of preferred meanings and interpretation were drawn from focus group sessions with regular relenovela viewers.7 The content analyses showed issues never accounted for in Mexican telenovelas, such as male impotence, baldness, homosexuality, AIDS, polygamy, menopause, battering of women and children, home violence, and fear of solitude, thus contrasting with strong male figures of earlier soaps and driving dramatizations more into reality and away from fiction. As to audience interpretation, focus groups conducted with regard to both telenovelas indicated that viewers saw a need for fantasy to remain true to the genre but also that they prefer stories closer to reality. Audiences look for stereotypes, which help to identify good from bad, but appreciate characters that are multifaceted, making plots more interesting. The focus groups’ findings suggested that Azteca’s telenovelas appeal to young, more educated viewers, whereas Televisa’s are popular with older, less educated audiences. More educated people reported watching telenovelas for entertainment and said that they do not believe the situations depicted, whereas less educated people insisted that they themselves had had problems similar to those presented and found the information given them helpful. Others reported that the treatment of subject matter leads to controversy within the household but that they watch anyway. Some viewers who appreciated that telenovelas are now closer to reality and less predictable also claimed that youngest family members were not allowed to watch. Young viewers in the focus groups said that telenovelas gave them a sense of fashion and trends. Some indicated that they offer culture, showing new situations and providing interpretations of reality. A majority insisted that telenovelas depict reality by presenting Mexican society as it is. One woman mentioned that telenovelas “teach language and culture” and that some behavior is imitated by younger viewers.

The Final Episode: Mexican Cultural Identity Is Changing Media texts are important components of evolving cultural texts written by complex societies. This is particularly true nowadays because of the globalization of culture and the dynamics of worldwide television production exchanges. In Mexico, the genre evolved in concert with political and economic change. A large, developing country having to deal for the first time with freedom of expression and democracy had to come to terms with the fact that reality was more sordid and crude than television had hitherto depicted. Television producers working with the assumption that after several political and economic crises, Mexico’s audiences doubted what they saw

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on television came to the conclusion that viewers were mature enough to accept reality with all its flaws. Political, economic, and cultural contexts were finally represented through telenovelas and articulated and interpreted through language and other highly elaborate modes and codes. New role models pertaining to international and cosmopolitan societies were introduced to Mexican audiences, ones now consisting of people from all genders and socioeconomic backgrounds instead of just housewives. New ways of establishing relationships, dealing with personal and social crises, while still looking for love and affection, entered Mexican telenovela plots. While still supporting family values, a wider range of social roles for women have been established. Male characters are slowly moving away from machista attitudes, confronting more active, outgoing women. Finally, Mexican telenovelas still carry a dose of fantasy and fiction, but they slowly resemble more real-drama situations. The hybridization of the genre is bringing about a new kind of media product, one that is probably unique in nature when compared to other soap operas in the world.

Conclusions Cultural identity traits are interwoven with reality and fiction in Mexican telenovelas. Mexicans seem to prefer greater doses of reality instead of fairy-tale-type stories in new telenovelas; however, they remain faithful to the genre conventions when trying to evade problems. For example, new role models and patterns of behavior are being established for viewers— especially women, shown as professionals working outside the home and dealing with situations that were traditionally the province of the male. Nonetheless, stereotypes are still used to generate preferred meanings (for example, handsome men and women models promote desired patterns of beauty), and a basic element of telenovelas in relation to Mexican cultural identity remains: poor, honest characters suffer injustice at the hands of the elite, and love will prevail. Mexican telenovelas now avoid cultural references and colloquial terms and language to enhance their usefulness for export as international products. Home consumption means that viewers are adopting a more cosmopolitan, internationalized jargon. The traditional characteristics of Mexican cultural identity—religion, language, national character, and history—are slowly being mixed with new elements, thus appealing to a wider, more globalized audience. Mexican telenovelas today are deeply engaged in the overall issue of reflecting a complex, dynamic, yet conservative cultural community while transforming identity into that of a more cosmopolitan, mature, liberal, and modern society. Further research has to be conducted to generate more evidence that will support these conclusions. However, the evidence so far

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available suggests that themes and subject matters, treatments of content, and styles of production in the newest Mexican telenovela productions are beginning to influence patterns of cultural identity.

Notes Carolina and Scarlet, the characters of the main Brazilian telenovela A Indominada (The indomitable) openly discuss their views on sex and reproduction. This intertwining of educational information and drama is part of the success of this production of Population Communications International/Brasil that has been designed to communicate sexual orientation and reproductive health information within the plot. Astudy conducted by the University of São Paulo on this telenovela alone indicates that telenovelas have contributed significantly to the reduction of birth rates in Brazil (Population Communications International 1997). 2. As pointed out by Katz and Liebes (as quoted in McAnany and LaPastina 1994) audiences recognize the fictional nature of the genre and the functioning of its rules, thus conceding that this formula is far closer to fiction than to reality; nonetheless, viewers accept the deal and play along (see McAnany and LaPastina 1994, 837). 3. Ibarra was mostly trained as a journalist doing film documentaries. This explains in part why his treatment of telenovelas related more to reality than to fiction. 4. The first Argos productions set the path for a radical transformation in social acceptance of certain subject matters, but the telenovela that truly transformed the institution of marriage and opened sexual taboos for discussion was Mirada de Mujer. 5. A group of students and professors of the Tecnológico de Monterrey in Campus Cuernavaca, Mexico, carried out the study between the months of August and December 2001. Special thanks for this data must be given to Dr. Juan Ricardo Cojuc, Dr. Ilya Adler, Silvia Soria, and their students. 6. The viewing sample for both telenovelas consisted of taped episodes from a typical viewing week (Monday to Friday), August 20–24. This particular viewing week was selected considering that both competing telenovelas shared the same time slot (which is considered primetime programming for each network), were at their peak viewing, and reported high ratings at the time. Quantitative and qualitative content analyses were applied to five episodes of each telenovela: five to Televisa’s Sin Pecado Concebido and five to TV Azteca’s Lo Que es el Amor. Ten key scenes were selected from each telenovela and carefully analyzed by three groups of students, leading first to the individual identification of visual, verbal, and nonverbal units of content and meaning and then discussed among groups at length. At the same time, four focus groups were conducted to gather elements of interpretation directly from audiences. Participants of a variety of sociodemographic characteristics were randomly selected to participate, the only prerequisite being that they would be regular telenovela viewers. The bridge of comparison was thus created by the audience between the quantitative part of the analysis and the qualitative ways of interpreting preferred meanings. 7. For a complete review on theory and critique of the genre, see Pearson (1999).

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References Audley, P. 1983. Canada’s Cultural Industries: Broadcasting, Publishing, Records and Film. Toronto, Canada: James Lorimer and the Canadian Institute for Economic Policy. Covarrubias Cuellar, K., A. Bautista, and B. A. Uribe. 1994. Cuéntame en Qué se Quedó: La telenovela como Fenómeno Social. México City, México: Trillas. González, J. A. 1994. Más(+) Cultura(s): Ensayos sobre Realidades Plurales. México City, México: Consejo Nacional par la Cultura y las Artes. Huerta Wong, J. E. 2001. No le Cambies a mi Novela: Dominación y Negociación entre Géneros en el Acto de Ver Televisión. Paper presented at the annual conference at the Universidad de las Americas, Bienal Iberoamericana de Comunicación: Globalización, tecnología y culturas, Puebla, México. Kottak, C. P. 1990. Prime Time Society: An Anthropological Analysis of Television and Culture. Belmont, CA: Wadsworth. Lozano, J. C., and F. C. Martínez. 2000. Consumo y Lecturas Negociadas de Noticieros Televisivos en Monterrey, Guadalajara y México. Paper presented at the Congreso Anual 2000 de la International Communication Association, Acapulco, México. Lull, J. 1995. Media, Communications, Culture: A Global Approach. New York: Columbia University Press. ———. 1998b. Constructing Rituals of Extension through Family Television Viewing. In World Families Watch Television, edited by J. Lull. Newbury Park, CA: Sage. McAnany, E., and Antonio LaPastina. 1994. Telenovela Audiences: A Review and Methodological Critique of Latin America Research. Communication Research 21 (6): 828–49. Muñoz, S. 1992. Mundos de Vida y Modos de Ver. In Televisión y Melodrama, edited by J. B. Martín and S. Muñoz. Bogotá, Colombia: Tercer Mundo Editores. Pearson, R. 1999. Genre, Convention and Evolution: The Changing Face of the Mexican Telenovela. Master’s thesis, University of Leicester, United Kingdom. Population Communication International. 1997. A Indomindada. Available at http://www.comminit.com/la/descripciones/lapdsbrasil/descripciones318.html.

Maria de la Luz Casas Pérez earned her bachelor’s degree in communication from Universidad Iberoamericana in Mexico City and her master’s degree in communication from McGill University in Montreal, Québec, Canada. She also holds a Ph.D. in political science from Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México. Her works include several articles and book chapters in the areas of communication, culture, and cultural identity. She is a member of the National System of Researchers in Mexico and has been working as a professor and researcher at the Tecnológico de Monterrey, Campus Cuernavaca, in Mexico since 1989, where she is presently the head of the Department of Communication and Social Sciences.